Dragonfly
by titaniatantze13
Summary: War is never pretty; the peace afterward can be just as ugly. Hermione and Draco struggle through this truth with the help of an unexpected ally. Canon/Epilogue Compliant; eventual D/Hr. SS/OC, SM/Rose.M for disturbing themes; READ THE WARNING.


**A/N**: Back in school, much of my research dealt with the idea of 'history' as a mythmaking enterprise, and this story was born as one of the bunnies that grew out of applying that sort of logic to HP canon. Three-to-five-shot with longish chapters.

**Warnings**: Canon Compliant / Missing Moments; Epilogue Compliant but eventual D/Hr. SS/OC; SM/Rose. Dark themes; mention of torture, suicide, euthanasia. Adultery. Substance Abuse. Strong language; ethical and moral ambiguity. Dumbledore-bashing; 'therapist's' POV from an author who is not a therapist and Did Not Do The Research. Angst.

**Citation Alert:** Several literary and flim references and/or quotes; attribution in AN 2.0 at chapter's end, as well as for near-quotes from canon and Word of God (interviews w/JKR, not fill-in-your-sacred-book-of-choice-here:))

**Disclaimer: **All recognizable characters and canon situations are property of JK Rowling _et al_; I'm just playing with them and make no money. Don't sue me; it will make me cranky and all of us poorer. Any original characters and plot are mine; play with permission only.

Many thanks to Daydreamer for the beta and to Frea for her commentary.

* * *

**Chapter I: Cocoon**

May 2019

The Dragonfly has stood in this quiet, forgotten little corner of Lancashire since the reign of Edward. For most of that time, it has been simply a cosy, out-of-the -way inn catering to the few travellers willing to brave the wilds of the North. In the forty-seven years since my father left it to me, it has been that and so much more.

An inn. Waystation, refuge, that elusive 'back-room' of the back-room political deal that is so necessary to the successful operation of any bureaucracy.

Mostly, it has been a soft place to land. Muggles can always find me easily, but the Dragonfly is hidden from wizarding folk, those who can see and take advantage of the modifications I made when I inherited. For them, I am a secret shared only by the lost, the desperate, and the determined.

In a world where two very gifted wizards forged a war that ground children to dust across two generations, that secret is rather more widespread than one could hope. If I were the sort for grand and symbolic gestures, I'd resurrect them both just so I could punish them for the misery they've caused.

But I'm not a hero, or a villain, or any sort of character that populates the myths that fill little boys' minds with the lies that lead them to their own slaughter.

I'm just an innkeeper.

Welcome to the Dragonfly Inn. Step into my parlour, if you please, and I'll show you the truth behind the history.

* * *

The magic guarding my little refuge is something like the Fidelius Charm, in that magical folk can only find me by invitation. I'm not exactly Secret-Kept; once you've been to the Dragonfly, you can return and bring a guest, and so on. The ancient rules of guestright apply: do no violence under my roof, respect me and the other guests, and leave your grudges at the door. The only way to find the Dragonfly without being brought by someone who is in on the secret is to have an invitation written and charmed by me.

In the time I've been in charge here, I've only issued blank invitations to three people.

An old schoolmate, who survived serving both masters longer than anyone could have expected him to, and did the best he could to care for his charges in the middle. I only hope Severus' soul has found the freedom that was denied him in life.

The formidable old battleaxe mourning the loss of her only child and his young wife to an eternal living hell. There are few on the so-called Light side who understand my feelings for Albus Dumbledore—may he never rest in peace—but old Aggie Longbottom is one of them.

The Nigerian witch living with the Black Widow curse placed upon her by a jealous rival for her Italian lover's affections. I think, when I'm dead, I'll leave the Dragonfly to her grandchildren. Her son, the scamp, used that invitation to smuggle the neutral children of Slytherin House out of Britain by way of my inn. I strongly suspect they spent the war ensconced in Nkoyo's palace in Calabar.

I'm dreadfully proud of the boy, but there was one harrowing night in the autumn of '97 when I had Potterwatch broadcasting from the attic—they came to me through another of Dumbledore's victims, a half-werewolf and eldest of the Weasley brood—muggleborn fleeing the Umbridge bitch in the basement and runaway Slytherins in the back room.

Thank God for Ogden's.

Nkoyo, Severus and Aggie were the only three people in the wizarding world who knew how I spent my days in the years immediately following Hogwarts. I've always lived at the Dragonfly, but Apparition is a wonderful thing, and the University of Birmingham has an excellent Psychology department. Unbeknownst to them, Blaise's Slytherins got as healthy a dose of counseling as I could provide in the guise of tea and hospitality before they moved on to warmer, safer climes.

Severus never admitted as such, but we both knew that his by-necessity sporadic visits were therapy under another name. It took quite a while after his death for the Ministry to sort out his effects, but they finally found a will hidden at Spinner's End, and the November after the Battle of Hogwarts, his invitation came back to me.

* * *

I didn't need an introduction to know the young man who stepped out of the Floo in my reception parlour; after all, his father had been one of our prefects my first two years at Hogwarts. Noticeably lacking was the air of absolute arrogant certainty that the elder had carried with him. This young man still wore dignity like a cloak, if a bit tattered to one who knew the signs, and he still had the rather shell-shocked glimmer in his eyes that I associated with the children who had survived the last bloody endgame of the match Riddle and Dumbledore had played with Hogwarts as their chessboard.

After scanning the room in one sweep of his eyes, Draco Malfoy focused on me in my place behind the counter, and strode across the room. He withdrew a familiar piece of parchment from his robes, placed it precisely on the counter and slid it across to me with a clipped series of questions.

"Who are you, what is this place, why did my godfather leave me this, and why did the Ministry make this the one exemption to my house arrest?"

It's a myth perpetuated by self-righteous fools that Slytherins are perpetually sneaky and cagey, and moreso with one another than at any other time. While we are certainly circumspect when the circumstances require—and our reputation makes circumstances require rather often—with those whom we consider family or as trustworthy as family, we can be startlingly direct. And, in my books, anyone who had one of my special invitations directly from the recipient was practically family.

I smiled at him, although a bit sadly, and replied, "I'm Sophie. This is the Dragonfly Inn. While we never discussed his intentions for that invitation, I imagine Severus thought you might appreciate an escape from time to time. And aside from the enormous debt of gratitude the wizarding world owes your godfather, Kingsley Shacklebolt owes _me_ several favours." I pocketed the parchment, and with a wave of my wand the hinged edge of the counter swung up and the door behind it opened. I cocked my head in invitation.

"Step into my parlour, if you would, and we can discuss this over a nice cup of tea."

* * *

"How did you know him?" _Why should I trust you?_

"We were schoolmates, in the same year at Hogwarts." _I've been here since the beginning._

"Slytherin?" _One of us?_

"Yes."

Grey eyes dart to my left arm and back, so quickly I could miss it if I weren't paying attention.

I hold his gaze, set aside my teacup, and draw up my left sleeve to display the unblemished skin beneath it. _I was never a slave._

Calculation, then, "Order?"

More breath than sound, spat more than spoken, "No." _I was _never_ a slave._

"Neutral, then." _Lucky. Coward?_

I cock my head, correct, "Unaffiliated." _Independent player._

He looks around the parlour, then back at me, "Did he come here often?" _Did he trust you?_

"As often as he could." _Yes._

"What did you do?" _How far?_

"I listened." _All the way. _

"And?" _No judgement? What did you offer him? What can you offer me?_

"And I listened." _No judgement. A soft place to land._

A pause, his eyes slide shut and the illusion shatters. "I wish..."

"Me, too." _Dear God, me, too._

_

* * *

_

Another day, another cup of tea. He takes his blonde and sweet.

"Is it true?"

Eyebrows raised in the universal gesture of 'elaborate, please.'

He seems pained to even the speak the words, "Was he really in love with Potter's mother?"

I have to think hard about how to answer this one—how to balance the truth I owe to all of those who take tea in my parlour and what might or might not be healthy for the young man before me to hear.

"When we were young, yes. They were friends before Hogwarts, and that grew, for Severus, into something more. They...had a falling out while we were still at school. Some years later, he inadvertently played a part in the events that led to her and her husband's deaths. I can't say how much of it at the end was still love and how much was a combination of guilt, shame, and the emotional stagnation that came with a lifetime of espionage. I do know that he was haunted by her memory."

"So Potter was right? He was really Dumbledore's man all along?" _Did he only try to help me because he was ordered to by his true master?_

I take a chance and answer the question he's really asking. "The last time Severus was truly, unreservedly happy was the day you were born, and your parents asked him to stand as your godfather. You were the one thing that was _his_, by his own choice. The year he spent watching Riddle and Dumbledore play you against yourself as a sacrifice to their strategies is what gave him the hatred necessary to choose tearing his soul over a clean death from the Unbreakable Vow. You were _his_, Draco, don't let anything make you doubt that."

His eyes go wide, and I lean forward to stress my final point. "He told me that he wanted nothing more than to bring you away from it and stash you here until the war was over. But he knew you would never leave your family, and in the end, he was a very honourable man. He felt he had obligations to keep."

The spiteful, spoiled boy comes out for a moment, "To Potter."

"To a dead woman." I hold my own share of spite.

He cocks his head perceptively, "You loved him."

I remain silent, because there are some things that are just mine, and I will not share them.

Apparently, my silence is confirmation enough for him, since he finally, _finally_ asks the question that will put him on the path he's here to walk.

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to get out from under what the war did to you. It won't be easy, and it won't be comfortable, and you'll have to be honest—even if you don't want to answer a question, be honest about that. I want you to make your life your own, without the shadow they cast."

"And what do you get out of it?"

Speaking of honesty...

A grim smile. "Vengeance. I couldn't help him out of it, not until they were both dead, and by then it was too late. But I can help you."

"How do I know you won't share what I say with the Ministry?"

I wave my wand to reveal the tell-tale lines of the proprietary charm used by the higher-end brothels on Knockturn Alley. Like an Unbreakable Vow, without the potential security leak of a Bonder. It was hell to acquire, but well worth the price in peace of mind.

"Oh."

Interesting that he recognizes it.

* * *

"How are you sleeping?"

"How do you _think_?"

In shrink school, silence is a tool they teach almost as assiduously as the oft-caricatured 'How does that make you feel?' The silence is usually better.

"Nightmares."

"Oh? What sort of nightmares?"

He glares weakly, then returns his eyes to his teacup. It rattles in his hands.

"I'm torturing people."

"Do you recognize them in the dreams?"

Tea sloshes on the saucer.

"My parents...Severus...old schoolmates...sometimes my friends, sometimes..." He swallows, and whispers, "sometimes it's me."

"Are any of these dreams drawn from memory?"

"Why do you need to know that?"

I wait.

"I don't want to answer that question."

"Okay...How?"

He looks at me blankly.

"In your dreams, how do you torture them?"

* * *

When Aggie's invitation came back to me that Boxing Day I wondered, at first, why she would have chosen to send this particular individual to me, of all people. Having read between the lines of the extensive media coverage, I knew for a fact that—doing the just thing at the trials aside—the girl was not disposed to trust any Slytherin. Well, those of us not tragically vindicated in martyrdom to her cause, at any rate. And, certainly, any assistance she required was hers for the asking through more mainstream channels.

Then I got a good look at brown eyes gone hazel with the clouded reflection I knew very well.

I'd seen it in Severus' eyes, and in those of the nominally reformed and/or exonerated Death Eaters who'd made ample use of my back room during the Eighties.

I'd seen it in the mirror, after their passkeys mysteriously stopped working.

I remembered what else had been in the media; the official narrative of the war to which everyone—the so-called Golden Trio included—clung as if it were a religious icon.

And I knew why Augusta had sent Hermione Granger to me.

She'd been an Auror for most of the century. Through Grindelwald's rise and Dumbledore's intransigence and the beginnings of a new threat.

She saw it in the mirror, too.

_Avada._

_

* * *

_

As she sips her tea—bitter with a splash of milk—her eyes drift round the parlour. When they light upon the wall opposite her, they widen a bit, then flick back to me, and she takes a deep breath.

"There's nothing wrong with me, not really. I've read all the books—I mean, it's not as if I could start talking about magic and wands and such with a real therapist..." her cheeks colour as she realizes what she's said.

One of the many assumptions at the foundation of our brave new world is that purebloods are the only ones with prejudices. Like so many of those assumptions, it is a bald-faced lie.

She barrels on, "Anyway, I know the breathing exercises and the visualizations and the calming techniques. And I have no reason to complain—I didn't lose any family, and I got everything I would have asked for, really. We're all alive and healthy and Voldemort is finished. So there's nothing wrong with me." Another deep breath, and a determined stare, "It's just a touch of post-traumatic stress. I have it under control."

Just a _touch _of PTSD. As if it were the flu. This gives me an idea.

I arch an eyebrow, just scathing enough to be noticed, "Clear fluids and bed rest and let it run its course?" _How arrogant and ignorant can you be, little girl, to think that Unforgiveable magic can be cured by such...Muggle...means?_

She understands the subtext, and the threads holding the clouds together break. Raw, uncontrolled magic crackles around her. The teacup shatters, the shards glowing faintly in her lap.

Muggles think rage is red. It's not. It glows green like something toxic and radioactive. Like hate, and splintered souls.

This girl carries her backdraft perilously close to the surface. A side effect, no doubt, of denial and ignorance.

Calm, impassive demeanour, and a neutral question. "What brings you here today, Miss Granger?"

Trembling hands and wary eyes, "Mrs. Longbottom sent me."

We've reached the deflection portion of today's programme.

I respond with an even gaze and the ever-useful silence.

Eyes cast down and right, jaw clenched. Words like a wedding ring surrendered to a desperate thief. "I hexed Ginny Weasley at Christmas dinner."

"Oh?"

The silence drags on, then, "Harry said something about this being much better than last Christmas, and if it weren't for me he wouldn't have survived it—which is true, certainly—but then Ginny said something about being sure I was able to help him. It was just...her tone of voice made it clear exactly what she meant, and it all just came back on me. What Ron said when he left us in the forest, and Rita Skeeter back in fourth year, and suddenly all of these really bad thoughts about Ginny just...happened. Things that it's not like me to think. Like she was one to talk, since if she had been there like she wanted to, _that_ would have been the only thing she could have done to help. And how dare she imply that it's all I was good for, when I had fought beside him, and risked my life for him, and nearly died for him, and--" She clamps her mouth shut on the next logical step in her litany. She closes her eyes, and demonstrates the extent of her research with one of the classic exercises to centre her breathing and calm her thoughts.

When she opens her eyes, there is distance; detachment. She continues clinically, "And then I hexed her. Which isn't uncommon, at the Burrow—that's how she perfected her Bat Bogey Hex, after all, but..."

"But?"

Wariness again, "I used something just this side of Dark. Every time she opened her mouth she couldn't help but voice her most secret thoughts, about whatever came to mind. Things became fairly...nasty...after that. There isn't a counter hex; you have to wait until it wears off. She spent the rest of the day locked in her room, and Neville and his Gran took me back to Longbottom House with them. This morning Mrs. Longbottom gave me that parchment and practically shoved me into the Floo."

That is one of the Compulsion jinxes she's talking about—related foundationally to Veritaserum and Imperius—and many people would categorize it as just _that_ side of Dark, as it specifically targets what the subject most wishes to hide.

I take a sip of tea and lean back into my chair.

"Has anyone explained to you precisely _why_ the Unforgivable Curses are unforgivable?"

* * *

"Cruciatus."

Confirmation, really, of what I already knew. There's something empty about him that hints at what he's lost. The only question that remains is whether that part of his soul is permanently broken, or if it can be filled again.

"Cruciatus?"

"_Yes_."

"Do you know what it does?"

A sneer. "Of course I know what it does."

"Not to them, Draco. To _you_."

* * *

The magic that feeds Unforgivables is nearly sentient, and positively Newtonian in its demands for reciprocity from the witch or wizard who dares use it. The Imperius erodes control—the more one uses it, the less one is able to control one's own thoughts, actions, and impulses. The Cruciatus steals one's empathy (which neatly explains Bellatrix Lestrange, I think). In what one less a cynic would doubtlessly call proof of the essential goodness of human nature, that empathy never runs out; after protracted use, it merely becomes an engine to fuel the curse.

And the Killing Curse? It's not a magical bullet, or electromagnetic pulse to stop the heart and stall the central nervous system. It rips a soul from its earthly moorings and flings it into the ether, literally ejecting the impetus for all those chemical and electrical processes from the body. As such, it demands a similar rending from its caster, a rip in the soul that must be fueled by hate.

Ironically, the more untried the soul—what the foolish call innocent or good—the greater the price exacted. In order to dredge up the hatred necessary to fuel _Avada_ these individuals cannot simply rend their souls with a surgical slice; they must shatter it and assemble the requisite hatred from the pieces.

If I hadn't already known that the facile dichotomies of Good vs. Evil and Light vs. Dark bandied about by the war's victors were just so much wishful mythmaking, the very person of Hermione Granger would have proven it all bollocks. Because, had she been as innocent and good and full of moral certainty as they all claimed she was, her psyche would never have survived.

The first _Avada_ would have sent her to join Aggie's Frank and his wife at Mungo's. And my instincts told me there had been more than one.

"Tell me about the Battle of Hogwarts."

"Well, after we gained entry via the Room of Requirement, we met up with the DA and several Hogwarts alumni--"

"Miss Granger."

Wary eyes, and utter stillness.

"I've read the Prophet, and the Quibbler, and the published transcripts of the trials and tribunals. I don't need a refresher, and regurgitating the mythology will do you no good. If you aren't honest, you're wasting your time. And mine."

Sometimes it takes a firm hand.

She tries to be offended, to be the person she's supposed to be—the righteous and unassailable heroine, the heart and brain of the heroes of the wizarding world.

She fails.

I see it the instant it happens; the instant she admits to herself that the difference between fiction and reality is much smaller than that between history and reality. That she isn't the person she thinks she should be, or even the person she was.

That she broke, and broke the mould into which she had been poured, and did the unthinkable.

"I was hunting Bellatrix."

* * *

"I told myself I was hunting him."

"Hunting? That's an interesting word to use."

Wry and self-deprecating. "It was better than the truth."

"Which is?"

"He was right. On the Tower. I couldn't really do it. Even the cabinet...when Greyback came through I hated myself." A sneer. "We were supposed to be cleansing the wizarding world, not letting the filth in to feast on it."

"You said he was right. Was that all he said, that you couldn't really do it?"

"No. He offered me..._us_...sanctuary. And he said it was _his_ mercy that mattered. Not mine."

Bloody, fucking, dark-wizard-buggering _bastard_. If there is any justice in the universe, he is in Hell servicing Tom Riddle for eternity. On his knees. On broken glass like the broken souls he left in his wake.

Like broken boys.

"Merlin help me Sophie, I was just getting ready to beg when Uncle Sev got there and killed him. I..." He drifts off, unable to articulate what that moment did to him. What being brought to the brink of a life-altering epiphany only to have it ripped away—and not by fate or coincidence, but all according to the plan of his would-be victim—did to him.

I didn't lie when I told this boy that he was the only reason Severus had been able to go through with it. He told me later that seeing Draco finally realize what he'd gotten himself into and knowing that it had always been too late to do anything about it, all because Dumbledore wanted things to happen that way—that's when he decided to do it. That was the hatred that fueled his _Avada_. When the old man had begged, he hadn't been begging for his life _or_ his death.

He'd been begging for Severus to choose. To choose sacrificing Draco's soul to a slow corruption while Potter fumbled round blind, deaf and dumb. To choose his overblown and long since repaid debt to a corpse over his love for the living, breathing boy between them.

What remained unsaid that night was that Dumbledore had left none of them with any other choice but the one _he_ wanted.

The fallout sits before me, trying to find the bits that were lost that night, and all the nights after it.

"_He _decided that I'd failed because I was weak. That I'd been coddled too long. He gave me to Aunt Bella."

"For what purpose?" As if I really have to ask.

He swallows, fingers the signet ring on his right hand. "Punishment. At first. Then..."

"Then?"

"Training. She started with more Occlumency, then...then she taught me how to break them."

I have to use my own limited skills to Occlude the depth of the horror I experience when he tells me this.

The Muggles were right to fear us, all those centuries ago. From Legion, to Mr. Hyde, all the way up to Pinhead, their fantasies have been but expressions of a deep-seated race memory of the evils we can—and do—birth with our magic.

Occlumency, much like Psychology, is a simple term used to describe a broad array of disciplines. At its mildest, it is merely a form of meditation, a way to order and calm one's thoughts and emotions. At its darkest, it allows the Occlumens to compartmentalize his mind and bury the most complex emotional and psychological responses—things like love, and compassion, and conscience—so deep in his psyche they are nearly irretrievable. Combine this skill with systematic administration of Cruciatus, from both ends of the wand...

It's how you make a monster.

I can only hope that the hell he's been through was enough to rip apart the walls keeping his self divided, for I don't have it in me to manufacture the sort of trauma that would effect such a result now.

I wonder, for a moment, just what the hell Severus thought he was about, expecting that I could fix this. I couldn't even fix him, with two decades, biology, and an infinity of shared secrets on my side.

* * *

"She tortured me, you know."

"I remember reading it in the transcripts."

She snorts. "I'm all for transparency in the Ministry's accounting of the war, but nobody bothered to ask me if I wanted my weakest moment bandied about for all to see. I'd rather you hadn't read about it."

"I'd probably feel the same way."

"You can't possibly understand what it was like. There we were, in Malfoy Manor of all places, worried about how to get Harry out of there, and then suddenly it's all about that stupid hunk of metal. And she tortured me over it." She laughs, and it is not a pretty thing. "They were all so afraid—even _her_. Moreso than we were, I think. For being so superior, it certainly took them long enough to realize that if you're more afraid of your leader than your enemies are, you've perhaps chosen the wrong side."

"And so Bellatrix tortured you?"

"_Yes._ She knew I was lying, I could tell somehow, but I had to. I knew if I told the truth, confirmed her fears, she'd kill us all, even her family, to hide her mistake. Then she'd take the sword to her vault, and hide the fact that Harry had ever even been found. Somehow I just knew. So I kept lying, and it felt like fire everywhere, going on forever, and I wished and waited to die. When she cut me and threatened to stab me to death, the only thing I wanted right then was for her to do it."

That's the other side of _Crucio_. It steals your empathy and gives it to your victim, so they know you like you know yourself for as long as you hold the curse.

"And so at Hogwarts..."

"After Hagrid carried Harry out of the Forest, I...stopped. Thinking. Caring. I knew I was dead—it was just a matter of time—and all I wanted was to take her with me. All of them, if I could, but her most importantly. Once Neville killed Nagini, I followed her. Any of the Death Eaters who got in my way..."

I wait. Two minutes. Three. Then...

"I cast the Killing Curse. Five times, and I was going for six when Molly shoved me out of the way, and _that_ was the one I really _wanted_. I..." She shifts in her seat, eyes everywhere but me. "Last summer, at the trials, when they decided everything Malfoy did was mitigated by his inability to do that very thing, and suspended his sentence, I thought 'what does that say about me?'

"And?"

"I was terrified. If being unable or unwilling to do it outweighs all of that, then my having done it outweighs everything else I did, everything else I am, right?" She shakes her head, "I know it wasn't logical—they exonerated Professor Snape, after all, and he _did_ cast the Killing Curse. And the Ministry, even a reforming Ministry, doesn't have the right to determine the moral value of my existence. But..."

"But?"

"My wand won't work for me any more. The only one that will, almost better than mine ever did, is...well, is _hers_. And I split my soul _five_ times, in quick succession, so...so in a way, it _does_ mitigate everything else. Because I'm not who I am, who I used to be. And I can't seem to find my way back."

I set my tea aside and lean forward. "Miss Granger, you were right, the last time you were here. I'm not a real therapist. What I do here is a hybrid of sorts, a cross between Muggle psychotherapy and sanctuary—which is a great deal more than the Muggles ever knew it was, even before they chose to forget it entirely. And insofar as I have anything approaching a speciality, this is it. Healing the damage caused by casting an Unforgivable."

"So you can help me get it back? Be who I was, who I should be?"

This is where she'll run, if she's going to.

"No." I give her a moment to digest this, then continue, "You will never be who you were. You've been irrevocably changed. What I can do, if you're willing, is help you ensure that the change is an evolution rather than a disintegration."

She sits motionless for a seemingly interminable length of time. Finally, she straightens, visibly steeling herself, and says, "Right, then. Where do we start?"

"Right here. With you."

* * *

"I wanted to want it, and I tried, but she was always there, watching, and she told _him_. I couldn't ever do anything that didn't make things worse for my family."

* * *

"I understand they're upset—they never really understood about magic. They saw it as a way to make life easier; just another skill or tool, like electricity or computers. They never understood the power, the fact that they are absolutely helpless before anything magical and there's nothing they can do about it. They still don't, not really. They say I infantilized them; that I've absorbed the superiority complex inherent in the wizarding world."

"Oh?"

A snort. "Yes. Ironic, isn't it? The very thing I fought against...it puts me in mind of that quote, Nietzsche, was it?" She stares pensively into her tea, "Stare long enough into the abyss..."

Silence.

"Arthur said they'd come around, eventually."

"What do you think?"

"Enthusiasm aside, he doesn't understand Muggles any more than my parents understand us. The concept of autonomy of self, the privacy of the mind, is far too integral to modern Muggle worldviews." A pause, then, "My mother's waiting for me to admit I was wrong."

"Do you think you were?"

"I think..." She raises her eyes to mine, and while they are momentarily empty of the telltale clouding, there's a ruthless implacability there I remember from the few times Bellatrix visited Narcissa at Hogwarts.

"I think I take care of what's mine."

* * *

He withdraws an object from his robes and toys idly with it. I wonder how he came into possession of a switchblade, and why he has it with him now.

"It was easier when it was just Muggles."

"Oh? Why was that?"

"Not what you'd think."

"Oh?"

"Without magic they're completely helpless, like newborn children. Worse, even; they don't even have the innate defences a magical child would have. It was usually over quickly, and then I could go somewhere else." _Go hide. "_Except..."

"Except?"

"Sometimes, Aunt Bella liked to play. Her husband had a taste for little girls, and she liked to watch. They especially liked families—taking the children one by one while the parents watched. I never really took notice of her toys, particularly, until just before school started they brought home a Muggle and his three daughters."

His eyes have that distant stare that says he's not quite in the here and now.

"The middle one looked like that half-blood Metamorphmagus cousin of mine—I think that's why she chose them. We'd recently heard she'd fallen pregnant to the werewolf, and _he_ wasn't too happy with the taint on our bloodline. Uncle Rodolphus had just finished with the oldest and was about to go for the little one when this Muggle girl breaks out of my Body Bind and pulls out this...bar...and squeezes and suddenly she has a knife."

He presses the lever to eject the blade, and places the knife delicately on the coffee table between us, using one long index finger to spin it slowly in place.

"We were all so shocked—for a moment, it looked like magic—and before we could recover she had slit her little sister's throat. Then she looked straight at me and buried the thing in her own heart. She was—I don't know, maybe fifteen? Before she died she laughed in Aunt Bella's face."

He gives the knife one more desultory spin, then swallows and sits back.

"Why do you think she did it?"

"I didn't know. I didn't really think about it, except to be relieved it was over quickly. But right there at the end, when my mother told us she'd lied to _him_, my father backed us into a corner. Before he turned around, I saw it."

"Saw what?"

"The look. The same one that Muggle girl had before she killed her sister." A moment's silence; a search for words. "Uncle Severus was always punished for helping Potter even when it was necessary to maintain his subterfuge. Without that excuse...we were no longer necessary, save for the access to our vaults. If _he_ had won that duel..."

I breathe an internal sigh of relief that he is still capable of making those kinds of connections. He isn't irrevocably lost, and I'm glad far beyond any degree to which I have a right to be. I try to give him the words.

"Euthanasia."

"Pardon?"

"What the Muggle girl did. That's what Muggles call it—it's from the Greek."

A pause, then, "Dying well?"

I tilt my head, "A good working translation. They would likely prefer the phrase 'clean death,' although the one most often used is mercy killing."

He mutters, "Mercy..."

* * *

"Molly claimed it was a mercy. What she did—that we were too young and innocent to really kill, and she spared us the ordeal of trying."

"Do you think that's an accurate assessment of what happened?"

"Have you ever heard of the acronym NIMBY?"

"American, yes? 'Not in my back yard', I think."

"Hmm. Perhaps, the wizarding equivalent would be 'Not my daughter, you bitch'."

"Oh." I haven't heard that part.

An ironic twist of the lips. "The funny part is, we almost had her. The bitch in question, that is. For all of our differences, Luna and I fight very well together—back in the DA the two of us could beat any other pair who would have beaten either of us in an individual duel, even Harry and Ron. Then Ginny barrelled in and we were distracted trying to keep her alive. She's very much like her mother in that respect. Take charge and do it yourself. Except, that didn't really work with Bellatrix, not for a half-trained witch whose Defensive education had been mishmash at best." She twists her teacup on its saucer. "Back at Christmas, it came out that Ginny resents her mother's interference in that duel. 'That bitch was mine,' I believe were her exact words."

"Do _you_ resent it?"

"I don't know. I can't really tell what I'm feeling most of the time, to be honest. Let me think about it."

"Hmm. Have you spoken to Luna?"

"Since the battle? Not really—the trials were such a madhouse we didn't have the opportunity to speak, and I haven't really left the Burrow much since then, except that week at Longbottom House while everything cooled off."

"Maybe you ought."

"Which, talk to Luna or leave the Burrow?"

"Both. I think it might help you get some perspective."

"Maybe. Neville's Gran did say I was always welcome. And it was very peaceful, helping in the greenhouses."

"And Luna?"

Hesitation. "Luna is...unique. She can be very difficult to talk to. She doesn't make much sense on the best of days, unless you pay very close attention and think in concentric circles around what she's said."

"Why do you think you fought well together, then?"

"I think Harry was probably right. He said we balance one another—reason and intuition working together."

"Intuition?"

"Luna does have this strange yet disturbingly accurate intuitive ability."

"Are you afraid of what she'll see?"

The only response is stillness and wide, clouded eyes.

* * *

"The worst was the ones I knew."

"You mentioned a professor from your school."

He shudders.

"Yes, Burbage. Sometimes, in my dreams, I hear her begging Uncle Severus."

He looks at me for a long time, and for the thousandth time I surrender my objectivity. But, I tell myself, only for him. This child who, in my most drunken, delusional, dysfunctional moments, I pretend might have been ours—the child of Lucius' and Narcissa's bodies, yes, but Severus' and my souls.

That is what godparents are, after all.

"He vomited for three hours straight that night. Charity never held anything against him—not his House, or his past, or his friends. He said she was always on him to encourage his Slytherins to take her class. She was fond of a good debate."

"It got her killed, though, didn't it?"

"That's what he said."

He sneers a bit. "I'm taking it now, though. Do you think she's happy, wherever she is?"

"Oh?"

"A condition of my release. The new Ministry's commitment to 'rehabilitation and reeducation'."

"What do you think of it?"

"Rank propaganda. No less than Umbridge, just with a different face."

I school myself not to betray my shock and the pride that accompanies it.

_Sweet Merlin, Severus, I hope you're listening to this._

I am, apparently, unsuccessful.

"Don't look at me like that, Sophie. They'll never be what we are, and they'll never have what we have, and they're eventually going to do so much damage trying that we'll have to intervene."

"But..."

He glares mutinously. Finally, he relents.

"I was brought up to respect endurance."

Endurance. Tradition. Survival. Cornerstones of pureblood wizardry.

"I've only ever seen three people endure Aunt Bella at her worst on their own terms. One was a half-blood, one a mu--" His throat seizes and he coughs up blood at the effects of the Ministry's Binding. I know from experience that he will refuse any help or even acknowledgement of what's happening, and it won't kill him, so I wait, and silently fume.

Shacklebolt patently refuses to do anything about this barbarism. Some nonsense about the public needing evidence of real change on the part of the offenders, and the Muggle science that demonstrates the effectiveness of these techniques.

I dread the day the Ministry discovers bioweapons.

Once he's recovered, he rasps, "...a _muggleborn_, and a...person of unconventional family politics." _Blood traitor._

Ah, Kingsley Shacklebolt, midwife to wizarding PC. How joyous.

I know the identities of the first two—I have, after all, heard both of their accounts of Bellatrix' antics. But the third...

"Who was that last, if I may ask?"

He peers at me suspiciously, and I remember that the Ministry limited their newfound dedication to transparency when it came to Riddle's Horcruxes, and thus the particulars of the Eastertime events at Malfoy Manor, and the importance of Gryffindor's ostentatious toothpick.

Specifically, the fact that Hermione Granger lied through her teeth under Cruciatus for seventeen minutes straight.

He lets it go, which is good, since I cannot explain in any case.

"Lovegood. A dotty Ravenclaw who ran about with Potter's group. They brought her at the beginning of the winter holiday as surety for her father's good behaviour, and because they thought he might know where Potter was. Aunt Bella was at her several times, and kept complaining that the girl just spouted on about imaginary creatures and her dead mother. She made me have a go, at the beginning."

I can see there's something more here.

"And?"

"Aunt Bella always said my Cruciatus was disappointing, and Carrow stopped even calling on me after the first week of classes. This was no different—moreso, actually."

"Hmm?"

Eyes down, a single shoulder shrugs. "She was just some dotty witch. I didn't have anything against her personally, except her friends, and, well...by then, I was just tired."

"And scared?"

A clenched jaw and a muttered assent.

"When we first got to the dungeon, she just stared at me with those buggy eyes. And then, when I cursed her, she...faked it."

I can feel my eyebrows climbing. I've never heard of anything like this. "She faked it?"

A short nod. "If I hadn't been cursing her myself, I could have sworn under Veritaserum she was being tortured by _him_. Aunt Bella must have bought it, because she left me alone for the rest of the break." A pause. "Do you think I should thank her?"

"Do you?"

He doesn't answer.

"I saw her again, after she escaped. At Hogwarts."

"The battle?"

"Yes. In the Great Hall. She and Granger were duelling Aunt Bella." He takes a sip of tea. "Uncle Severus used to invent these fantastic stories to tell me when I was little. The three of them, wrapped up in their magic like that...reminded me of something from one of those stories."

"What was it?"

"'Beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night.' Like the Erinyes."

I send a mental smirk to the shade of Severus Snape. We'd both loved Tolkein as children, and it was just like him to disguise his favourite Muggle story as his own invention in order to share it with his godson. And I can certainly see Bellatrix and Miss Granger cast as two of the Furies; the pictures I've seen of Luna Lovegood in the _Prophet_ put me more in mind of their later incarnations.

Then again, I wasn't at the battle that day.

For the first time since we've been meeting, Draco shows curiosity about something not directly related to himself.

"Do you know which one killed her, in the end? I couldn't see, and I wasn't paying attention to much at the trials aside from my family."

"Actually, it was Molly Weasley."

"What did Aunt Bella do to _her_?"

"Nothing, directly. Her daughter had apparently joined the duel."

He thinks for a moment, cocks his head. "There's something...wrong...with that, somehow."

I snort. "There's something wrong with all of it, Draco. That's the definition of war."

* * *

"There was something wrong with Harry."

"When?"

"This summer. He was the one always pushing for more transparency, more disclosure, and then suddenly he wasn't. He didn't want to testify before the Wizengamot—he begged to have his testimony sealed in closed session with Shacklebolt. Eventually they compromised on a sealed session of the Wizengamot with no media and a redacted transcript to be published after the fact."

"Why?"

"He was trying to protect them, I think."

"Protect whom?"

"Professors Snape and Dumbledore."

I need to buy more Ogden's if I'm going to keep doing this to myself. And perhaps admit that I have a bit of a problem, and likely more than one.

"With Professor Snape, I understood. The things he'd revealed to Harry were very private, and he wouldn't have wanted them bandied about by the likes of Rita Skeeter after open testimony."

I simply cannot help myself. I spent seven years steeped in the prejudice Dumbledore sowed in an attempt to socially and culturally isolate any potential followers of Riddle. I occasionally succumb to that training.

"Yes, she _is_ a credit to your House, isn't she."

"I—what? Skeeter was a _Gryffindor_?"

"Yes, Sorted in '61, if memory serves; the same year as Molly Prewett, now Weasley. Before my time, but their shared reputation outlived their Leaving by a good generation. They were bosom friends, by all accounts. Got up to all sorts of malicious—and lascivious—mischief, even taking into account the inevitable exaggerations and distortions of time."

She blinks owlishly a few times, then, faintly, "That explains...quite a bit. Poor Ron." She shakes her head, "Well, Wormtail was Gryffindor, too, and we all know how he turned out." She turns pensive, "I wonder if that'll make it into the history books."

"I should think that would depend on who is writing them, and why."

She makes a noncommittal noise.

"You said you understood why your friend wanted to shield Professor Snape. What about Dumbledore?"

Her eyes dart to mine, and I know she's noticed the lack of honorific.

"Well...Harry was actually dead for several minutes. Very few people know that. While he was...in-between, he calls it...he...well, he _communicated_ with Professor Dumbledore, and learned some very disturbing things about the choices the Professor had made over the years. Harry being Harry, he forgave him immediately—Harry has blind spots when it comes to father figures, particularly dead ones."

I snort derisively. At her questioning look, I consign any pretence to objectivity to the ether. Again.

"I went to school with James Potter. Trust me, your friend is happier blind."

She narrows her eyes; cocks her head. "What House were _you _in at Hogwarts?"

"What disturbing things?"

"You're deflecting, Sophie."

I smirk, remembering the unique joys of any conversation with the Muggle-reared among my kind.

"Quid pro quo, Clarice."

Her eyebrows shoot up, and she quirks a bit of a grin. "My father loves those books."

I nod, noting that she's less tense mentioning her father than she is her mother. I hear the voice of my unrepentantly Freudian tutor murmur 'Electra' in my mind's ear.

"Let's finish on this topic and then I'll answer your question." She nods.

"Most disturbing were three pieces of information. The first is that he set things up so that my rational tendencies would delay Harry's discovery that Voldemort would seek out the Elder wand. That's why he left me the Beedle instead of just explaining everything outright." She looks at me with the eyes of an old soldier and asks, "How many people died, how many lives were destroyed by Voldemort's Ministry while we floundered around, thinking that bloody book was the key to the Horcruxes? And then while Harry obsessed about the Hallows? And all the while that befouled locket was eating us alive.

"And then, there was the fact that Professor Dumbledore had planned for Professor Snape to be the master of the Elder Wand after he died. That made me wonder if his behaviour on the Tower, trying to talk Malfoy down—not to mention asking Professor Snape to kill him to save Malfoy's soul—what if all of that was just a cover so he could set Professor Snape up as bait for Voldemort? For that matter, was that why he let everything happen sixth year, Katie and Ron and, well, the additional motivation Voldemort was using on Malfoy, instead of trying to intervene earlier? The argument that Malfoy would have been killed if he had just doesn't stand up to logic.

"Finally, he knew. Possibly from the beginning, and certainly after Voldemort came back. He _knew_ that Harry would have to sacrifice himself in order to defeat him. That calls into question every single interaction they had. How much of it was trying to prepare Harry to make that sacrifice? To make him _willing_ to make that sacrifice? What, if any of it, actually stemmed from Harry's best interests?"

She takes a deep breath and a bit of tea to moisten her throat, then sits back in her chair.

"At the inquest, one of the Unspeakables had managed a way to project Professor Snape's memories for everyone to view. What I saw in those set off some bells, but then Harry and I went to lunch and he explained the rest. _That _set off one of my episodes."

"What happened?"

"Nothing of substance. But what I wanted, on the other hand..."

"What did you want?"

Her eyes are firmly on the hearth, but I know they've gone cloudy and light from the flat inflection and undercurrent of malice in her voice.

"Professor McGonagall never gave my time turner back to the Ministry after my third year, and I know where she keeps it hidden. There's a way to make them go further than they're designed to go. It burns the device to cinders, so it's by necessity a one-way trip, but..."

She makes eye contact and I suppress a shiver.

"For several heartbeats, I sincerely planned to risk a galaxy-swallowing paradox so I could burn that thing back to sixth year and make _all_ of Malfoy's problems go away. And unlike him, I knew I could do it. Without. One. Moment's. Hesitation."

Her eyelids slide shut, and she inhales deeply through her nose, holds it for a slow count of five, then exhales just as slowly through pursed lips. After several repetitions of this process, she opens her eyes—they are once again clear and brown—and shrugs.

"Harry saw it coming and talked me down—I'm rather lucky he didn't know what I was thinking; he idolises Professor Dumbledore almost as much as he does his parents." She tilts her head. "It was after that I started researching combat veterans and psychological disorders."

I think I've come to genuinely like this girl.

The fact I think so because our homicidal fantasies have shared an object says something about my own mental state, I think.

* * *

"My parents want me to take the NEWTs."

"Oh? What do _you_ want?"

A shrug in the universal language of teenagers. _It doesn't matter what I want._

"Humour me."

He has to think about it. It takes ten minutes.

"I want to fly higher than a Ministry functionary can cast a ward."

"And?"

And the floodgates open.

"I want my wand back. I want to be able to go into my own library. I want to play Quidditch again. I want to say 'thank you' to Uncle Severus, and 'I'm sorry'. I want to command respect again, and kiss a pretty witch in a thunderstorm. I want my mother to stop apologising to me, and my father to start. I want my father to be proud of me. I want to have a conversation with him that doesn't end with one of us vomiting blood on the Aubusson. I want to sleep through the night. I..."

He has tears standing in his eyes and I want to hug him, but he has physical contact issues and it would be counter-productive.

"I want to stop being afraid."

Fuck counter-productive. I slowly rise from my chair and sit next to him on the couch—it becomes whatever sort of furniture will make my guest most comfortable and is always a green velvet couch for Draco. It makes me smile nostalgically whenever I see it appear.

I make sure there is no contact between us as he breaks into the sobbing that is so terribly heartbreaking to see in a young man, because you know he's on the cusp of the age at which a man will no longer show such emotion without first enduring psyche-shattering trauma.

He stiffly leans into me and lets his head tilt sideways until it rests on my shoulder. I remember a tale of Severus' involving Draco and a broom accident that was more frightening than injurious, and risk lightly carding my fingers through his hair. He freezes momentarily, then relaxes and in time subsides to the occasional hiccough, followed by slightly ragged breathing. Finally, a deep exhalation that would be a sigh if eighteen-year-old males did such things, and a rueful, "I actually do want to take my NEWTs, though. Not that it's any more possible than the rest, with the library sealed, our accounts frozen, and everything I left at Hogwarts—both times—locked up in a store room Merlin knows where."

He resumes his upright position and withdraws a handkerchief from his robes, which I politely Vanish for him once he's cleaned himself up. He draws his dignity back around him and asks, "How does it help me to know what I want and can't have?"

"Well, some of it you can, just not at the moment. Time will take care of the wards, the Binding, the library, and most of the Galleons. There are pick-up Quidditch games all over the country whose players wouldn't care if you were Tom Riddle or the Minister himself so long as you can catch the snitch. The Ministry will eventually give you your wand back—your probation ends with the house arrest, so they have no reason--"

"They don't have it. They say it was lost in the confusion of the battle." He sounds sceptical.

"Oh? When was it last seen?"

"Potter had it. He used it to kill _him_." There is a world of resentment and resignation in that single statement.

I get the glimmer of an idea, and dismiss it.

"Ohhh. Well...that might take some thought. As for a pretty girl; trust me, one will come along, and this is England. There's no shortage of storms."

I take a deep breath. "Have you forgiven your mother?"

"There's nothing to forgive. She tried to protect me."

"Have you told her that?"

"No."

"Perhaps you ought...And your father?"

He growls in frustration.

Lucius was always two silk stockings short of a drag queen. I've often wanted to throttle the poncy, self-absorbed idiot, but never more than I do now.

"Father says he was doing what was best for us the whole time. All of it. That the risk was worth the reward."

"What do you think?"

"I think he knew that night. The night _he_ came back. What would happen; what the world would really become. And I wanted it, too. I was so happy when I heard. All that power...our world, taken back for _us_ finally, and Potter and Weasley and Granger and all the rest finally getting what they deserved."

"Do you still think they deserved it?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I...no, I guess. But I wanted it then, and he always gave me what I wanted. If I hadn't wanted it...maybe...maybe he wouldn't have gone. That night. And all the others."

"Do you think it would have made a difference? You not wanting it back then?"

"I don't know."

"Why _wouldn't_ you have wanted it, then?"

"Pardon?"

"What had you seen, or heard, or experienced back then that would have made you not want it?"

A shrug.

"Very well, try this, then. Why _did_ you want it?"

"Because--" He stills and stares at me, and I know he doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to acknowledge this, to let go of the fear that he has disappointed Lucius and admit consciously that it's the other way round entirely.

I give him some silence to fill. Finally...

Quietly. "Because he wanted it. And I wanted to be like him."

"Thus, the only way you _wouldn't _have wanted it..."

"Was if he hadn't wanted it." His head falls back and he stares at the ceiling. "When does it get easy again? When can I wish my rivals dead without seeing blood and insides and corpses behind my eyes?"

I snort. "I cannot speak from experience, but the 'easy' part likely won't happen until the day you die. As for the rest, it's a good lesson, although brutally learned. There _are _better ways to get what you want."

My delusions really don't need the reinforcement of Severus' sardonic eyebrow quirked on the face beside me. Nonetheless, they get it.

"You grew up, Draco. Too soon, too fast, and too hard, but 'tis done now. There is no going back."

Bitter like strychnine. "You forgot alone."

"Hmm?"

"Too soon, too fast, too hard, and alone."

At least Dumbledore's pawns were in company.

Before I can respond, he changes the subject. "And the NEWTs?"

I smirk, "I'm fairly certain that won't be a problem."

* * *

"For a while, I feared I might be a socio-path."

I've learned that this girl does not appreciate sugar coating of any flavour, so I respond with the truth.

"Given the damage your soul sustained, it was one possibility."

An even stare; a low murmur. "Disintegration."

"Just so."

I study her for a moment, then ask, "How do you feel about all of that now?"

"When I think about it? Dreadfully confused. I'm no longer homicidal—haven't been since that one time, and I think that was more the soul sickness than anything—but I still wonder. Was all of that an unfortunate necessity stemming from the prophecy, or was it indicative of his larger strategy against Voldemort? How far did it go; how far _back_ did it go? He was our Headmaster and Harry's mentor, but where did that stop and the mastermind start? Could Voldemort have been stopped earlier, just as Grindelwald could have? How much of Professor Dumbledore's history with Grindelwald informed his behaviour with Tom Riddle?"

She paused, and asked the question I'd been asking myself about the war since my parents died and my best friend came back to me branded for cattle.

"Was all of it necessary?"

"I'm not sure anyone can answer that question, but I believe I can help you make a start on some of the others, if you'd like."

* * *

My mother was a Rosier, from a minor, more recently imported branch of the family. Among pureblood wizards, traits stick through the generations. The Burgundy Rosiers, for instance, were bibliophiles, like blond on a Malfoy or mad on a Black.

Jacqueline Rosier Bellwether was a beloved only child, and thus was not disinherited when she married a Muggle innkeeper. She inherited the ancestral library. When she died, it fell to me. And through her blood, I am a Rosier, too.

Like blond on a Malfoy or mad on a Black.

Thank Merlin Undetectable Extension Charms work as effectively on rooms as they do on luggage.

* * *

"You were in Slytherin?" I've gone two more steps down the corridor before I realize she's stopped in her tracks.

"But—but you're muggleborn!"

I smirk, "I'm not, actually. Not that it would have made a difference."

She fixes me with a stare I know she's copied from Minerva McGonagall. "I've read _Hogwarts: A History_ more times than can be counted. I was rather known for it in school, actually. And I'm quite certain that Slytherin House embodies purity of blood."

I shrug. "And Gryffindor embodies bravery." A significant look. "Explain Peter Pettigrew."

She huffs as we reach our destination. Hands on the doors, I ask, "Have you ever heard of a witch called Melisende? She was Queen of Jerusalem.

She shakes her head, "No. I didn't know Jerusalem ever had magical rulers."

Sardonically. "Neither did they. Look her up—on both sides of the Statute." Then I open the doors on my own family jewels.

She freezes in the doorway, her reply lost to unadulterated lust. I've seen that look before, and it makes me smile even as the knife twists in my guts.

"Hermione?"

She shakes herself out of her awe. Faintly, "Yes?"

"Follow me, please."

As I lead her through the shelves, I explain, "History is a story just like any other. You don't really know the story until you know the storyteller. The version of_ Hogwarts: A History_ that you've read was written by Bathilda Bagshot at the same time she wrote the History of Magic text currently in use. Her editions replaced these," I slide two books from the shelf in front of us, "which were removed from the curriculum—and the library—at Hogwarts in 1952. Shortly thereafter all copies at the Ministry disappeared, and they slowly trickled out of circulation among private booksellers. They're something of a curiosity, now, among collectors."

Brow wrinkled thoughtfully, she is drawing breath to ask a question when she's interrupted.

"Sophie, this edition of Advanced Potion Making is at least seventy years out of date, and your Mugglish cataloguing system is incomprehensible. Where do you keep--"

Perhaps giving him open access to the Floo in the library without notification was not, in retrospect, the best idea I've ever had.

He cuts off when he comes adjacent to our position and catches sight of my companion.

For her part, she, having spun into a defensive crouch and drawn Bellatrix' wand, glares at him, eyes clouding briefly before returning to clarity.

I would be pleased with the progress if that clarity did not contain the implacable readiness to kill or maim at need.

Draco hasn't moved, and I keep my eyes on him as I slowly and gently place two fingers on the wrist of her wand hand and murmur, "Guestright, Hermione. You cannot harm one another here."

She relaxes a bit; snorts. Then does more harm than a wand, in a way that will not trigger the magic.

"Miss Granger," she corrects, then, "and _he's_ always been better at standing aside while someone else does the dirty work. So long as he's not brought along his father or resurrected his sadistic bitch of an aunt, I'm quite safe."

His face is an impassive mask as he stares at me.

_Please don't run, Draco. You don't have to run from this. _

He snaps the book shut and sets it on an empty shelf. Turns on his heel, and moments later there is the whoosh of the Floo and his clipped command, "Malfoy Manor!"

When I prevent her from casting at his retreating back, she rounds on me incredulously. "He's supposed to be on house arrest! He should be detained and questioned by the Aurors!"

"The Ministry already knows. They allow the exemption."

A scowl. "Of course Malfoy would wriggle out of his punishment, light as it is."

I wish that the Confidentiality Charm would allow me to tell her just what her Ministry calls a 'light' punishment. But the implication of special treatment—to that I have a response.

"Oh? And when you spoke of Aurors, did you have anyone specific in mind? Perhaps two someones, who 'wriggled out' of things like taking their NEWTs and completing the three years' training necessary to do their jobs properly?"

The scowl turns mutinous. "_They're_ doing good work."

"So is Draco."

"Like what?"

"I can't say."

"Won't, you mean."

Her choice of interpretation doesn't alter the outcome, so I give her silence.

"I'm contacting the Ministry anyway." She casts a quick but strong _Hominem Revelio_, pockets her wand, and commences her own retreat.

"Talk to Kingsley, then. He's the one who arranged it."

She stops, turns, scowls again.

"You were _all _children, Miss Granger, fighting on someone else's chessboard." I extend the books, "Take them. You may return them via owl, if you prefer."

She glares for a moment; snatches the books—careful to be gentle of them, of course—and makes for the door. Moments later I hear the faint crack of her Apparition, no doubt directly to Shacklebolt to confirm my story.

I slump against the shelf, spines digging into my shoulder blades, and let my head fall back with a thump.

"_Fuck_."

* * *

"Why?"

"I cannot answer that question, Draco, any more than I could answer it when she asked it about you."

He thinks for a moment; makes the connection. "Who?"

"Augusta Longbottom."

"_Longbottom?_ Giant handbag, vulture hat? Her grandson made trouble every other day at school last year? _That _Augusta Longbottom?"

"Augusta is a very good friend of mine, and was of Severus' as well."

He shakes his head slowly, then subsides and resumes the inscrutable staring.

Finally, "What does she get out of it?"

"Augusta?"

"No, the--" Jaws snap shut, deep breath. The curse is working, damn the bastards. "_Granger_. What does _Granger_ get out of it?"

He's trying to get around the confidentiality ward, not just to get the information, but likely also to see how tightly it holds me to his own confidences.

I cock my head, gazing at him. I finally come up with something that I can divulge, because it's what they both get.

"A soft place to land. It was a nasty war, Draco, for everyone involved."

Severus was right, when he said this boy had whinging down to an art. "Why does she have to land here? She's already got my whole world kissing her feet, singing the praises of Muggles and Muggleborn everywhere. And nasty? She didn't have _him_ living in her house for two years."

"No, she didn't. Do you envy her that?"

"_No_. She has _nothing_ to envy. She's just an unremarkable Muggle who excels at memorising textbooks. She got lucky in the war, and now she'll take some excessive number of NEWTs, do something unremarkable in some unimportant department at the Ministry for a bit, then settle down with Weasley to spawn a litter of equally unremarkable little half-bloods. I'll never have to see her or think about her again, and that's how I want it."

"Oh? It sounds as if you have something personal against her."

"Hardly. I just don't--"

"Want the reminder?"

A sneer, brittle round the edges because he knows precisely what I'm talking about. "_What_ reminder?"

"Endurance. Witches like the Furies, and, perhaps...your father's disappointment? Did he agree with your assessment of her as unremarkable?"

Jaws clenched, eyes everywhere. A nearly inaudible mutter, "He certainly remarked her often enough while I was in school."

* * *

"We were shaped. As much as Malfoy, if not more."

She sits in the overstuffed armchair that is her usual, tea untouched on the coffee table next to the books I loaned her. There is something resigned about her demeanour, as if she's facing an admission she had hoped to avoid indefinitely.

On second thought, I think that is precisely what she's doing.

"I must admit I'm rather surprised to see you here, Miss Granger."

A faint blush; eyes on the hearth. "Yes. Well, when I got home, Mrs. Longbottom..."

I smile knowingly, "Ah. What did Augusta have to say?"

Rueful, "Quite a bit, actually. Starting with my behaviour being a deplorable breach of decorum and a vindication of all the things 'those blind ignorant fools' say about the muggleborn being common and rude. And then she ordered me to go tell my parents what I'd just told her, and not to come back until I did."

Ouch. Aggie never has pulled punches.

"What did they say?"

"Well, my Mum still refuses to speak to me, but my Dad..."

"Yes?"

"He heard me out. Then he asked if Malfoy had attacked me that day, or said anything. And then he said he hadn't raised a bully, and this was why I should never have been fighting a war at my age, because I was too young to really grasp all of the implications—too young to understand exactly what fighting the war would do to me. Too _vulnerable_ to what it would do. Then, he told me he'd always love me no matter what, but that I needed to get my head back in order, and to keep coming here.

"And when I got back, Mrs. Longbottom decided I needed some lessons in history. And etiquette, apparently." A grimace. "I spent two days reading through the journals she provided, and another cross-referencing the Muggle history at the local University." She shakes her head. "I...the witch hunts, the Inquisition, even the Crusades...it was _horrible_." She shudders. "And to think that everything those people suffered was reduced in our lessons to an inconvenience, or an eccentric pastime...and Hogwarts..." She glances at the books between us. "I've not even begun to wrap my head around all of the implications."

"Well, what have you wrapped your head around?"

A pause; reluctance. "He isolated them. Eight generations of children, and he made it so the rest of us would hate and suspect them on sight. But it doesn't make any sense! That only made it easier for Voldemort to recruit them, to expand his ranks."

"You hadn't been born yet when Riddle first re-emerged after he left Hogwarts—for that matter, I was only an infant. He was, by all accounts, highly charismatic and very persuasive. Think of it in terms of a virulent and potent strain of the flu—easily transmitted and not lightly shaken off."

_Think, girl. Severus claimed you had imagination, now _use_ it._

Comprehension dawns, quickly joined by horror. "Quarantine." The horror takes over. "Collateral damage, and acceptable losses." She shakes her head. "No. That can't be right...it's just not...it's all so contradictory! It flies in the face of everything else about Professor Dumbledore's personality." There's a panicked undertone to her voice, and I know she's thinking of Skeeter's travesty of a biography--and the letters in Dumbledore's own hand reproduced in it--as she tells herself this lie.

"It's like any other research, really. You assimilate new data and re-evaluate your conclusions accordingly."

"But it _always_ fits! Like a puzzle, all the pieces come together, and the sources support one another. Nothing fits, here! I've never before seen so many contradictons."

"Think about this—where have you always found these sources that fit so neatly together?"

"The library at Hogwarts, and Flourish and Blotts, and some things from the Black library."

I lift my eyebrows and wait.

"If Professor Dumbledore was manipulating our education to quarantine the Slytherins, then the library there would have been censored to reflect that. Okay, I can accept that premise; there's evidence to support it. But the bookshop...oh." Faintly. "Earns the majority of its revenue selling books to Hogwarts students. Because Hogwarts sends us there." She closes her eyes. "And Sirius and Molly both went through the library at Grimmauld before I ever saw it." She falls silent.

"Miss Granger?"

"Everything, _everything_ I know, everything I learned is being called into question, and I don't know where to go to find the answers."

"Perhaps you should start by looking at all of the angles, and then decide for yourself. You've done that before, as I recall."

A sour huff. "I hate this. I _hate_ it. It doesn't feel as if I belong anywhere. My parents don't understand me because I'm a witch, and because I fought a war they can't even begin to comprehend, because, apparently, _I_ don't even properly comprehend it. Magical people don't understand me because I'm muggleborn. I can't feel comfortable at Hogwarts, not since the battle. I don't even belong in my own skin, my own _life_ any more, and I'm just...floating around in this awkward haze with my soul in bleeding pieces!"

"And how does that make you feel?"

I startle a chuckle out of her with my invocation of the Muggle cliché, and she subsides with a sigh.

"Very tired, and very confused. And very, very alone."

* * *

"What will you do, once you're released from house arrest?"

A glimmer of pride; a touch of determination. Ragged round the edges, but there. "I'm a Malfoy. We always land on our feet."

"The ground has shifted a bit, though, from where it once was. You'll need all the allies you can get. And you're not the only one who grew up fast, hard, and early."

Just the only one who did it alone. There might be a remedy for that.

* * *

"You're insane."

"Oddly enough, that's what he said."

"Well, then. It's settled."

"Not precisely."

An incredulous stare.

"Do the research for yourself. Focus on reintegration of combat veterans into civilian society in America after Vietnam. It was an excellent therapeutic model, and had a great deal of success."

"But that was for soldiers who'd been extensively trained and needed to change their mode of thinking. Malfoy might have been brainwashed, but we weren't."

"Weren't you?"

She opens her mouth, then snaps it shut, still looking mutinous, and I forestall her with a raised hand. "I'll ask the same favour of you that he granted me. The Anniversary Memorial is in a month. I won't bring it up again until after that. Take the time to think about it, and really watch what's going on around you. Let me know then, and either way we can still meet for as long as you need to. Does that sound fair?"

A stiff nod.

"Good, then. How was your visit with your friend Luna?"

* * *

Almost six months to the day after Draco first stepped into my inn, I am sitting in the parlour, contemplating my decision.

It is late—or early, however you choose to view it—and the crisp spring air flows round the Dragonfly through the windows and doors I've thrown open in an attempt to dispel the ghosts of memory.

Miss Granger is, I assume, currently at Hogwarts, attending the Memorial. Some idiot thought it a good idea to hold the thing on the grounds of Hogwarts, one year to the hour after the battle there. It is to be an all-night victory ball, with a memorial service at sunrise.

Draco is having a quiet evening at home with his parents, I hope talking with them about how the war and their involvement in it affected him. His mother, I think, will be pleased to know that he doesn't blame her.

His father, I fear, is a lost cause. I hope not, but still.

I sip my fifth firewhiskey, gazing at the object on the coffee table. It is a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship, intricately carved and shaped from the finest obsidian, dark twin to the basin of Dumbledore's that played such a critical role in Potter's training for and ultimate victory in the duel with Riddle.

It was a gift from Dumbledore to his 'good friend', so that he could teach Occlumency to the sacrificial lamb without constantly borrowing Dumbledore's to safeguard his secrets. He brought it to me one year and a day ago, along with a few other objects and rather extensive instructions to be carried out should Potter fail.

He knew, somehow, that either way the battle fell, he himself would end up dead.

It is, I think, those instructions that reassure me whenever I doubt the course I am attempting with the children under my care—for they are still children in many ways, their emotional and psychological development as stunted by the war and its masters as was Severus' own.

My musing is interrupted by the Floo activating. By the time Draco settles himself opposite me, I have gulped the sobriety potion Severus developed and regard him with steady eyes and a clear mind.

He opens his mouth to speak, and for a moment I think the cracking sound comes from him, but footsteps in the next room preface the rather intense arrival of my other frequent guest.

She's done up in exquisite dress robes—Aggie's doing, most likely; while her own personal taste is garish, she's adamant that those around her present themselves at their best for any occasion—with hair and light make-up to match. She cleans up very nicely, and I wonder whether she doesn't do so on a daily basis out of convenience or for some other, deeper reason.

I realize she's been running and is caught in some high emotion; she's panting as she leans against the door frame as if it's the only thing holding her up; her eyes are closed.

Faintly but with feeling, "If I hear one more fawning euphemism for 'you were tortured bloody' or 'a wall fell on him whilst he was watching your back,' or see one more person open their mouth to congratulate me on my 'defence of decent wizardkind everywhere' only to stalk off in high dudgeon once they realize I've the audacity to actually show my scars, I. Will. _Avada_. Them. In the _back_, I swear to whatever god you prefer."

She opens her eyes and fixes me with an accusing—but unclouded—glare.

I'm glad we've dealt with the backlash. The fractures will be a bit more difficult.

"How did you know? How did you know it would be like _this_? These...these..._bloody_ hypocrites, name-dropping Muggle things like Slughorn on Pepperup—and getting it wrong, because for the last time it is e-_lec_-tricity and it is _not_ sentient—and all the while they sit fat and happy in their offices at the Ministry reaping the rewards of their nepotism and their corruption and their _centuries_ of legal bias and all Kingsley _bloody _ Shacklebolt can do is keep repeating 'compromise' like it's his favourite prayer. And nobody, not even the ones who were _there_, is willing to actually _talk _about what really happened. They're perfectly happy to buy into the lie, to pretend it was some glorious revolution ushering in a new era of the same old shite with a pretty Muggle face.

"There's nothing new about it and it wasn't. Glorious _or_ a revolution. It was blood, and mud, and death, and fear, and pain, and I did _not_ do it for _them_."

She winds down to a halt, and notices Draco. A slow blink, and a stare that lasts forever. It's not a challenge, or an assessment, it merely...waits. As does the impassive regard with which he returns it.

Her eyes dart to the object on the table and widen, then jitter between it and him several times.

"Is that--"

"Yes."

"And..." Track the eyes: Pensieve-Draco-Pensieve-Draco-Pensieve-me.

"Yes. All three of us."

Back to Draco. More waiting. Then, "I did _not_ survive the war to live like this. Those people need to learn a lesson. I cannot teach it if I cannot function, and I can't do either if I don't understand. I'm in."

She doesn't break eye contact.

Silence.

I feel the need to fill it, despite my years of training. A murmur. "Erinyes..."

Given the mythology, I wonder if I've unconsciously cast myself in the role of Athena.

He glances at the basin; gets stuck there. I realize I haven't explained what it is. Dumbledore only trusted his Pensieve to those firmly under his thumb, and Severus never trusted his to anyone.

Until he trusted it to me. Which would have meant more if he hadn't been preparing to die.

"It's a—"

"He knows what it is."

My eyebrows nearly sail off the top of my head, and I imagine they rebound from the ceiling before returning to my face where they belong.

"Harry took his to the Wizengamot for the trials. It was used to give evidence, particularly from witnesses who were still incapable of making the journey to the Ministry."

"Oh."

Silence still. Eyes on hers again. Waiting. Then, finally, he nods. Once, clipped, then resumes staring at the Pensieve.

I reach out, run my fingers along the edge of the basin.

_Please, Severus, help me out. Tell me I'm doing the right thing here._

Of course the bloody bastard wasn't much for reassurance when he was alive, so I don't know why I expect that to have changed now he's dead.

Silence.

It figures. Instead, I choose to hope that Albus Dumbledore is spinning in his tomb, watching as I prepare to unravel half a century's work on his part. Of course, since his objective has been reached, he probably doesn't care.

In the far reaches of my mind, I imagine I can hear a rusty, bitter chuckle.

* * *

**A/N/A: External Citation Alert! Nerdsome Footnotey Goodness! Proceed at Your Own Risk!**

**1. **On Hermione getting what she wanted: According to the HP Lexicon, in 2006 JKR said that one of the things Hermione would have seen in the Mirror of Erised is the three of them 'alive and unscathed and Voldemort finished.'

**2.**"...it was his mercy that mattered. Not mine": A paraphrase of Dumbledore's words on the Astronomy Tower. Rowling, _HBP_, Scholastic Paperback Edition, 592.

**3. **Legion: The Gerasene demoniac from the Christian Bible. See Mark 5:9; Luke 8:30; Matt. 8:28-34.

**4.** Hyde: The protagonist's alter-ego in _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

**5.** Pinhead: The antagonist/villain in _The Hellbound Heart_ by Clive Barker; the appellation didn't come about until the series of films based upon this novella.

**6. **On the link between Occlumency and suppression of 'goodness': HP Lexicon linked to an interview with JKR in which she very strongly implies this link with reference to Draco. /articles/2005/0705-tlc_

**7.** 'Stare long enough into the abyss...': The entire quote is, "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, _Beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future,_ Trans. Helen Zimmern, (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 97.

**8. **Euthanasia: Gk. _Eu _(well) and _Thanatos_ (death).

**9. **On the Binding and Muggle science: Two words: aversion therapy. Or, if you prefer, behavior modification. Google 'Little Albert'. A fairly mild example.

**10. **'Beautiful and terrible..." Tolkein, _The Fellowship of the Ring_, Ballantine Books (New York: 1954), 473. This is, of course, from Galadriel's speech after Frodo offers her the Ring.

**11.** Erinyes: The Furies in their original _very _frightening incarnations, before they were changed into the Eumenides--the gracious ones. They were the daughters of Earth and Night and tasked with avenging blood guilt and punishing sinners in Hell. See Mark Morford & Robert Lenardon, _Classical Mythology_, 6th Edition, Longman (New York: 1999) 45, 303, 324-5, 327.

**12. **'Quid pro quo, Clarice,' Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, _Silence of the Lambs_, Orion Pictures, 1991. Based on the book of the same name, Thomas Harris, St. Martin's Press (New York: 1998). Hermione's reference to 'those books' is to Harris' series (_Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, _and _Hannibal_) which all feature the character of Lecter to a greater or lesser degree.

**13. **Electra: The Electra Complex. The distaff counterpart to the Oedipal Complex in which (to put things overly simplistically) a woman has fantasies of killing or otherwise 'disappearing' her mother and desires her father sexually. According to my undergraduate Psych 111 professor, Freud or one of his disciples concieved of this as a half-hearted afterthought to Oedipus in the interest of symmetry.

**14.** Reintegration of Vietnam vets into society: Unfortunately, I invented this out of whole cloth. Going by what I gathered as a child whilst eavesdropping on my father and those of his friends who also survived that 'conflict,' there was precious little (read: nothing) in the way of therapy or even support or much sympathy for combat veterans during the Vietnam era. The reference to training as brainwashing is based in (anecdotal) fact, however; the very deliberate evocation of a dichotomous social/psychological/cultural matrix as part of training for combat and the need to untrain that mindset post-combat is something I've gleaned from conversation with Iraq war vets of my own acquaintance.

**15.** On Sophie as Athena: Reference to Aeschylus' _Eumenides_, in which, after chasing Orestes hither and yon to punish him for matricide, the Furies are denied by Athena, sitting as judge at Orestes' trial; she then alters their very nature by offering them sanctuary in Athens and the worship of her people (this, of course, requires much in the way of eloquent persuasion). Thus the Erinyes became the Eumenides. The play itself is excellent and explores some of the themes I often see in the later HP books--generational conflict and cultural authority among them.


End file.
